This Common Spice Is Great For Improving Insulin Sensitivity

Sep 12, 2018

As many of you know, one of the main reasons patients come to me now is because they’re looking for safe, natural options to help to improve their blood sugar.

People are getting the message.

Doing all you can to keep your blood sugar under control is one of the surest paths to living a life full of energy and free of disease.

They’re also tired of their doctors telling them to try conventional treatments whose side effects require intense legal disclaimers…

And they want something that doesn’t just improve their blood sugar, they’d like for it to boost other areas of health too.

Well I’m happy to report I have several options here that allow my patients to have their cake and eat it too (provided it’s gluten/dairy/soy and sugar free).

As many of you know, one of the main herbs I recommend for this is Berberine. I’m sure many of you have seen my special report on Berberine where I go into great depth on how berberine helps to activate AMP-K - an enzyme essential for healthy cell energy and blood sugar regulation.

But I said this article would be about a common spice…

And Berberine is neither common, nor a spice.

Berberine is quite rare, which is why many people haven’t heard of it.

But there is a very common spice, one I know you’ve heard of, that has been shown to be quite powerful at helping to improve blood sugar (and no, it’s not cinnamon).

So if you’re trying to improve your blood sugar by becoming more insulin sensitive, then including this herb in your diet will definitely help.

How Turmeric Could Help Improve Your Blood Sugar

Turmeric is easily one of the most popular spices in the world.

Not just for food preparation (turmeric is the main spice in many curries and Asian-Pacific dishes), but also for medical purposes.

Plus, turmeric is one of the most well studied spices of all time too.

If my recollection serves me right, it’s been the subject of at least 4,000, if not more research papers.

There’s a two-fold reason turmeric is so popular amongst practitioners and patients alike.

Reason #1 is because ancient cultures have used it for years to treat a variety of ailments, so it’s already been popular for centuries.

Reason #2 is many times when it’s studied, researchers find yet another astounding medicinal use for it.

Thankfully, one of those medicinal uses is to help improve blood sugar.

So how effective is turmeric at helping improve blood sugar?

In a word: Very.

In a study published in Diabetes Care, a group of scientists sought to determine how turmeric might influence the blood sugar of those who had “borderline” blood sugar issues.

In an exhaustive, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial 240 subjects were randomly assigned to take a placebo or turmeric for a period of 9 months.

Every 3, 6 and 9 months, the subjects were given a variety of tests and subjected to a variety of different observations to determine if their blood sugar control issues ever got so bad that it might require later medical intervention.

At the conclusion of the study, 16.4% of the subjects who took placebo only were found to have blood sugar levels that progressed into the “danger zone.”

But no one who took turmeric for the same amount of time had any problems like that at all.

This led the researchers to conclude that not only was turmeric helpful for individuals keeping their blood sugar under control… but because turmeric supplementation didn’t come with many adverse effects they ruled it would be a beneficial treatment for people who were struggling with blood sugar control.

When this study was first released it was seen received with a good deal of fanfare.

But… not everyone believed turmeric could really do that to blood sugar.

Guess What Happened When This Doctor

Put Turmeric To the Test?

When Dr. Mosley saw the original study I just referenced, he decided to perform a similar experiment.

While not as rigourous, or accurate, (it wasn’t a randomized, double-blinded, placebo- controlled trial) Dr. Mosley relies on evidence-based research (whether his own or from clinical trials) to determine his recommendations.

And since conducting his own study, he now recommends turmeric to improve blood sugar.

Here’s what he had to say about his turmeric experiment in an excerpt from his blog.

“...We (Mosley and team) tracked down leading researchers from across the country and with their help recruited nearly 100 volunteers from the North East to do a novel experiment. Few of our volunteers ate foods containing turmeric on a regular basis.

Then, in true Trust Me style, we divided them into three groups.

We asked one group to consume a teaspoon of turmeric every day for six weeks, ideally mixed in with their food. Another group were asked to swallow a supplement containing the same amount of turmeric, and a third group were given a placebo, or dummy pill.

The volunteers who were asked to consume a teaspoon of turmeric a day were ingenious about what they added it to, mixing it with warm milk or adding it to yogurt. Not everyone was enthusiastic about the taste, with comments ranging from “awful!” to “very strong and lingering”

…

So what, if anything, happened?

[Professor Martin Widschwendter-researcher on the study]. ‘We didn’t find any changes in the group taking the placebo (the dummy pill)’, he told me. That was not surprising. ‘The supplement group also didn’t show any difference’, he went on.

That was surprising and somewhat disappointing.

‘But the group who mixed turmeric powder into their food’, he continued, ‘there we saw quite substantial changes.

Dr. Kirsten Brandt, who is a senior lecturer at Newcastle University and who helped run the experiment thinks it may have something to do with the way the turmeric was consumed.

“Because our volunteers all tried consuming their turmeric in different ways, we can be confident it was the turmeric that was making the difference and not some other ingredient used to make, say, chicken tikka marsala.”

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